This Week in The Clone Wars: The Ahsoka & Chewie Team-Up

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This Week in The Clone Wars: The Ahsoka & Chewie Team-Up

Season Three of Star Wars: The Clone Wars ends with a double-episode special event. In "Padawan Lost" and "Wookiee Hunt," Ahsoka Tano is first imprisoned on a Trandoshan planetary game preserve, and then must team up with a Very Furry Guest Star in order to survive.

Dave Filoni, supervising editor for The Clone Wars, points out that the Wookiee was a natural to bring on:

Everybody loves Chewie. . . .He’s like a big teddy bear, except that he’s got a temper. You want him on your side, because if he’s on your side, he’s the best friend you could ever have – and who wouldn’t want a Wookiee for a best friend? But we didn’t include him lightly. He’s such a special part of the films, and we knew that we had to do right by him. The story had to do him justice.”

To do that, The Clone Wars team brought in Peter Mayhew, who performed Chewie in the movies:

“Having Peter’s involvement was essential, and it was a major coup for the crew,” says Filoni. “We’d done some preliminary designs and some rough animation tests, but we were coming from a place of observation. He’s lived with the character for more than three decades. He is Chewie. He helped us focus in on the qualities that make Chewie live and breathe. His input helped make our version of the character that much more authentic – his mannerisms, details of his walk, facial expressions, that sort of thing. We couldn’t have done it without him; it just wouldn’t have been Chewie.”

Although the third season of The Clone Wars was called "Secrets Revealed," a major aspect of the show has been the massive upgrades to the already-impressive look of the show, as well as to the kinds of animation possible in a weekly series.

The finale is no different. As Filoni explains, the lush, vegetative backdrops posed new challenges for the show:

I can’t make it happen; I can only envision it. Joel [Aron] is the guy who makes it come alive. He’s my right hand, my hit-man, my Vader. He’s revolutionized the show, no doubt in my mind. . . . I really push him, and so does George [Lucas]. I’ll draw a picture and say ‘This is what I imagined’ – and he makes it happen. It’s a challenge, it’s what he wants – it’s food for him and the team. We’re taking that knowledge, applying it forward. Just look at the backgrounds in these episodes; we’ve got our characters, and now the background environment has also become a character.”

Adds Aron:

“My goal is always to capture the essence of Star Wars, the key elements that stick with you. . . . It’s a very specific feeling, and it’s not always completely literal. We’re in a different medium than the films, working on a different timeline with different tools. That’s a unique challenge; we have to find stylistic ways to reflect those familiar ideals – using shapes and colors, adding textures to backgrounds. But everyone on the crew is up for it, and we love it when it pays off.”

Here's a clip from "Padawan Lost," premiering at 8pm on Friday on The Cartoon Network: